Transfer Hard Drives from One Laptop to a new one.

Ogreman · ‎08-03-2023

My current laptop has broken hinge mounts on the body, right next to where the power cord plugs on causing the case to pop open each time I open the case. This is my HP 17m-ae-111dx.

I purchased a HP 17t-cn200 which has identical ports for my hard drives. I want to move my existing drives to the new laptop. I currently have a 1tb M2 ssd, and a 1tb SATA ssd drive, the M2 being primary and the SATA is mirrored (I believe). Can I simply open the case on the new laptop and pop those drives in w/o major difficulty in the system recognizing everything and booting up?

erico · ‎08-03-2023

The SATA HDD on the new laptop is more likely to be the data drive. It is not mirrored to the M.2 SSD boot disk.

" Can I simply open the case on the new laptop and pop those drives in w/o major difficulty in the system recognizing everything and booting up?"

Unfortunately, the days or a transferable HAL layer are gone since early the early advent of Windows 10 .

The Windows installation on the hard disk in the HP 17m-ae-111dx is tied to the laptop MAC address on the Microsoft licensing servers. That Microsoft licensing model means the once it is moved it will not boot up in another laptop.

What you can do is put the hard drive in an external USB enclosure and connect it to your new laptop and transfer the data. You will not be able to transfer the programs.

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Ogreman · ‎08-03-2023

The M2 is the boot drive and primary partition

erico · ‎08-03-2023

Yes.

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Ogreman · ‎08-03-2023

Yes, what?

I guess my primary question is as follows. On the 17m-ae111dx (original laptop) I upgraded to all SSD, both SATA and M2. When doing so I made sure the M2 was the primary boot partition and active drive. The SATA is secondary partition and Mirrored drive.

The new laptop takes both M2 and SATA drives, and I want to pop them in, and just reactivate Windows, or do I need to get the key (OEM) from the new laptop and activate Windows 11 again. I dont want to have to reinstall all my software to a fresh version of windows.

erico · ‎08-03-2023

Yes to the statement in your previous post.

I suggest reading my first post again as your questions lead me to think that you did not.

Each drive has its own volume and partitions. I don't recall the notebook being delivered with an option to use RAID.

Your explanations have skipped a few details about what you have done. If you have already gone online with the new laptop before upgrading the drives, it should already have Windows license on the Microsoft licensing servers.

All you have to do is perform a new install without putting in an activation key and go online again. Activation should be automatically done.

You will have to reinstall all of your software again.

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Ogreman · ‎08-04-2023

To simplify, the broken hinged laptop clearly is registered on the Microsoft Servers, I understand that it's tied to the MAC address. The new laptop is being built and shipped. It is NOT activated or registered on Microsoft servers or tied to the MAC address yet.

I've read elswhere, however am not clear that I can do a motherboard upgrade on the "broken" laptop and simply reactivate Windows, hence attaching the OS to another MAC address without having to reinstall the OS, or having to reinstall software.

Thus the question remains, if the new laptop hasn't ever been activated or registered online, can I simply pop the case drop in the Hard Drives and reactivate?

erico · ‎08-04-2023

"I've read elswhere, however am not clear that I can do a motherboard upgrade on the "broken" laptop and simply reactivate Windows"

The motherboard is what is tied to the Windows license activation key on the Microsoft Windows Activation servers.

If you remove the motherboard, there goes your licensed and activated copy of Windows that the laptop was delivered with. It is not transferrable to a different PC. The hard drive with the activated OS can not be transferred to the new laptop with the expectation that it will self activate. It has to be an initial setup just like when you took the broken laptop out of the box.

When you install a different motherboard in the broken laptop, you will have to source a new license activation key for the operating system.

If someone tells you that you can use the license from the broken laptop motherboard, they do not understand Microsoft new licensing scheme.

"Thus the question remains, if the new laptop hasn't ever been activated or registered online, can I simply pop the case drop in the Hard Drives and reactivate?"

The answer to that is no. You will need to perform an initial Windows setup and registration with the drive that is already in it.

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Ogreman · ‎09-06-2023

SOLUTION: I transferred the old hard drives to the new laptop. Turned it on, connected to the internet and signed onto my Microsoft account online and it recognized the windows version registered to my account and I never even got an error message. I then uninstalled the HP Support Assistant, deleted the Registry Keys for the Support Assistant, Re-installed the Support Assistant, Updated all my drivers and the system is working flawlessly. No software reinstalls for my critical apps etc.

Hence, Yes you can put your old hard drives into a new system as long as the computer is activated online through Microsoft and the activation is seamless.

erico · ‎09-07-2023

That is quite a surprise to me and likely many thousands of others.
The only way that is supposed to work is if the key was Retail, not an OEM activation key.

See the article at ZDNet.com

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-quietly-rewrites-its-activation-rules-for-windows-10/

https://www.google.com/search?q=is+windows+10+activation+key+tied+to+the+MAC+address+of+a+laptop&rlz...

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